Building Arley Homes

Brief

Arley Homes is a leading North West housebuilder which prides itself on building quality family homes and creating attractive and desirable environments and in maintaining its 100 per cent customer satisfaction target with all new buyers agreeing they would recommend buying with Arley to a friend.

Bell Pottinger North has worked with Arley Homes to promote its new home developments to potential buyers - from the showhome launch to "too late, all sold" - for more than five years, securing coverage in the property pages of local newspapers across the region. In 2009, BPN also developed a proactive corporate communications strategy to raise the profile of the company itself as part of the company's wider strategic growth plan.

Approach 

As a small regional housebuilder, Arley has always punched above its weight thanks to the combined skills of its management team and the quality of the homes it builds. Having maintained a strong buy and build capability during the worst housing market conditions in living memory, Arley was keen to demonstrate that it was still very much business as usual, despite many of the sector's larger players scaling back their operations dramatically. So, in addition to the ongoing tactical support for house sales, BPN also began to focus on key business successes such as land acquisition, planning approval, arrangement of new bank finance etc, and drew up a campaign that would develop a strong brand personality based around the managing director, allowing us to make the most of features, comment and personal profile opportunities. The news stories were targeted not at the local property press for a consumer audience, but at the regional business media and national property titles as a B2B campaign, and were supplemented by additional comment opportunities which saw the MD positioned as a natural spokesman for residential housing issues in the region.

Solutions / Benefits

Arley Homes is recognised and respected as one of the region's recession success stories, having survived and even thrived during a difficult period for the sector, and its MD has become a regular source for industry comment within the North West property press. We achieved repeat coverage in all the target regional business publications and websites - including the Manchester Evening News business section, North West Business Insider magazine, BusinessDesk North West, Place North West and Crains Manchester Business - and in the national trade bible, Property Week, following a face to face briefing on site with its North West correspondent. Personal and professional profiles of the MD were secured across all titles and he was the only housebuilder to give a response to both the 2010 and 2011 budget in the Manchester Evening News coverage. Reflecting the continued success of the company - and tthat of he PR campaign - he was also named in the top 100 most influential property profesionals in the Place North West annual review two years running.